A very warm welcome to BIS and its website, thank you for taking the time to visit us.
We hope the links provide you with a taste of what we believe is a very special school.
However no website can be a substitute for a visit to the school and we look forward to the
opportunity of meet- ing you personally. Visitors to BIS, both current and prospective parents,
are welcome at any time without prior appointments.

A man who loses his culture, loses his identity. Some of
us may have heard this proverb before, and thought it was a bit too extreme.

On Friday the 21st of February, Olugbenga
Adeyinka, Ekomobong Akpabio, Michael Okeme and I, were accompanied by Mr.
Alfred Ojigiri to the United Nations Information Centre to attend a seminar on
the importance of mother tongue.

The seminar included a video conference with Harare, through
this conference we were able to hear the views of students from there.

The mother tongue is a vital aspect of culture, it preserves
people and gives people identity.

We were told that in the past, Nigeria had 514 ethnic
dialects, now about 11 of them are extinct.

English is accepted as a universal way of communicating
because it is a language most people understand. But we should endeavour to
speak our languages.

The speaker, Mrs. Envera, urged us to spend time with our
grandparents, because they pass the culture down to us and teach us more about
the history of where we are from.

We were told about the benefits of speaking our mother
tongue. People who do not understand English well, tend to learn better when
taught in their mother tongue.

Speaking purely in our mother tongues also has its cons, it
tends to bring about discrimination and makes inter-ethnic communication
difficult.

We learnt a lot from the seminar and it was a great
opportunity for us.

We all left with the motivation to learn our mother tongues
fluently!

By Oluwaseunfunmi Onalaja
Year 10S

The trip was setup to commemorate UN Mother Tongue Day.

We started by singing a Yoruba song to the organisers and
partakers of the event whom we spoke to through a video conference call. It
involved a school in Harare, Zimbabwe, Covenant University Primary and
Secondary School, Queens College, Fountain Height School and GSCI.

We discussed about how our native languages could help in the development of a nation. The values and the teachings from that day were summed
up by the profound words of Late President Nelson Mandela. He said, If you
talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk
to him in his language that goes to his heart.

We talked about hoe Nigeria had over 500 languages and
today 11 of these languages are extinct, and around the world 6000 languages
are endangered. Our languages are our identity and as our mother tongues die
out, it does not just mean you lose communication it also means you lose your
culture. Our Mother Tongues should be kept alive and passed on because it is the
best of expression for our people.

When the video conference had ended we were spoken to by
Doctor Phillips on the importance of Polio and Measles Vaccination. These diseases
are not very difficult to cure but without vaccination, they become a huge
burden. They would be a Polio Campaign in early March, parents are advised to
come out and get their children vaccinated: everyone is encouraged to be
responsible for one another and report any person that shows symptoms of:

Fever and Rash illness (any person of any age who has
fever and rash together) report to the nearest fascility or call 08033388885,
07064185001, 08055104067, 08023116247.

By Michael Okeme
7V

Happy Mother Language Day!

Celebrating with Zimbabwe

The 21st February is known
internationally as Mother Language day to remind us of our heritage and further
promote cultural diversity and multilingualism, which inspire tolerance,
understanding, dialogue and also maintain connections with our roots.

This year, British International School,
observed this day by sending four students, Ekom Akpabio, Olugbenga Adeyinka, Seunfunmi
Onalaja and Michael Okeme, to the United Nation Information Centre in Ikoyi,
Lagos to celebrate our cultural roots with Harare, Zimbabwe.

The event kicked off with a Yoruba
folk-song, Iya ni wura iyabiye at the start of the video conference with
Harare and a representative in New York overseeing the entire event. Michael
Okeme, being the oldest student there was chosen to read the opening statement,
welcoming our counterparts in Zimbabwe.

We were spoken to about the importance of
preserving our Mother tongues and the traditions that come along with it. We
are warned against looking down on those who do speak their mother tongue as
being inferior or uneducated. We are told of the importance of our mother
tongues, how it identifies people, connects people, is a preservative of our
culture, i.e. dress, cuisine, moral, belief etc, and promotes understanding.

In the global world we have today it is
difficult to connect with people who cannot communicate in the common or widely
popular lingo, which is English. And due to western influence, youths are
becoming less familiar or not familiar at all with their heritage. The
percentage of people who can actually communicate in their mother tongue is
drastically reducing and those details that define a culture i.e. greetings,
are becoming infrequent. This increases the chances of many languages becoming
extinct.

On the other hand, diversity promotes
discrimination and prejudice. It is easy to generalize negative presumptions out
of ignorance, outside influence or negative personal experience. This is where
awareness comes in; bringing different cultures to mix promotes tolerance,
which is why the United Nations is bringing the world closer together one year
at a time.

Learn to cultivate the habit of speaking in
your mother tongue. Encourage youths to learn the mother language.

Strive to know more about your heritage. We
had a fantastic time with students in Harare and, through email, hope to keep
in touch.